Doctors in Kamloops calling for transparency, and action to address staffing shortages and surgical wait-lists

STAFFING SHORTAGES

“You can’t expect the same level of care that you got two years ago at Royal Inland. It’s just not possible,” says RIH emergency department physician Dr. Eric Haywood-Farmer.

Stress levels are running high for emergency department staff at the hospital. Recently, Haywood-Farmer says they’ve had multiple night shifts where very few emergency trained staff are available. All with a full emergency room and a hallway full of more people waiting to be seen.

“And there’s been a real reluctance to take more drastic moves such as diverting trauma to other hospitals and that kind of thing,” he says. “There have been specific instances in the past week even where we’ve asked for that move to made and it’s been refused.”

Haywood-Farmer says the hospital makes a concerted effort to backfill shifts with nurses from other wards, but it’s difficult for staff from other departments to fill-in at the ER.

“First of all because the work is very different,” he explains. “And secondly because our whole electronic charting system is different in (E.R.), and they don’t have access to it.”

To ease the staffing strain, Haywood-Farmer feels the province and the health authority need additional focus on staff retention, along with transparency around the struggles they’re operating under.

Haywood-Farmer says he wasn’t pleased to see recent comments made by Interior Health CEO Susan Brown about how the hospital was faring. He agrees that staff are working extremely hard, but felt the wording around how Royal Inland delivers excellent care didn’t paint an accurate picture of what he’s seen at work.

“That to me, is very insulting,” he says, “because if you’re saying that the hospital is operating at a good standard, it means that when something happens on my watch, it’s my fault because the system is ‘operating at a good level.’ And it’s not. You know, when things happen in our department, when we have adverse outcomes, it is not our fault right now.”

The emergency physician references a recent visit Health Minister Adrian Dix made to the hospital, and wishes management had used the opportunity to show the minister what the staffing situation looks like.

“They did not take him on a tour through the emergency department because apparently it was a little too chaotic that day,” he says, noting that the department the minister was toured through was an adequately-staffed section. “I don’t know how much Adrian Dix knows. I have no idea. Because as far as I can see, he’s not being told the real story. And I find that disappointing.”

SURGERY WAITLISTS

General surgeon Dr. Sean Gorman acknowledges that the province has to be careful as there needs to be a certain level of community confidence in the healthcare system.

“I think that the (health) minister and the organization are doing what they can to make things better. And I think that there’s some effort that’s come out of the awareness of the kind of trouble that we’re under,” Gorman told CFJC Today. “But at the same time I think that the message the minister made — whether that’s intentional or not — is highly misleading.”

The Ministry of Health stated last week that more than 330,000 scheduled and unscheduled surgeries have been completed since last March. This marked a new record for annual surgery numbers in B.C.

However, Gorman says those numbers don’t include the people sitting on a wait-list whose surgeries were never scheduled.

“The reality is that the kinds of cases that have been done are short snappers, as opposed to things that are complicated like having a joint replaced or having your abdominal wall reconstructed because your guts are falling out and you’ve got a bad hernia,” he explains. “Anybody who needed to stay in hospital for more than a few minutes to a couple hours after their operation weren’t being offered operations.”

Dr. Scott Hughes adds that the orthopaedic wait list in Kamloops is unlike what they’ve seen before. He says the list has gone up from about 1,100 patients pre-pandemic to about 1,800.

“Those cancellations are no longer related to COVID and the pandemic and the number of patients in hospital. Those numbers are related to the chronic under capacity that we have here in Kamloops, chronic understaffing that is just exacerbated by everything else,” says Hughes.

There’s no simple solution to staffing shortages or surgical backlogs. But medical professionals are hoping for a recruitment and retention boost, along with funding for those resources.

“We’re trying to gain the attention of senior administration and the ministry but it’s really the public out there that has the loudest voice that can make a difference,” says Hughes. “And the stories of every individual on a wait list for over a year now has the capacity to make change.”

CFJC reached out to the Ministry of Health for an interview about the situation at Royal Inland Hospital, but the Minister was not available by publication time.

Additionally, CFJC reached out to Interior Health for clarification on recent nursing complement levels, but has not received a response.

by Dylana Kneeshaw

Doctors in Kamloops calling for transparency, and action to address staffing shortages and surgical wait-lists

Our Community